Uploaded August 2021 | Updated September 2026, 8 hours ago

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Mary Beard, Cambridge University. This six-part lecture series examines the continuing engagement throughout history with images of Roman emperors and its impact on Western visual art and culture.

In this second lecture, originally delivered at the National Gallery of Art on April 3, 2011, the esteemed classicist and professor Mary Beard traces the emergence of imperial portraits, their role in the iconography of Roman power, and their shifting interpretations and latent significances in the modern world.

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